Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia on suspicion of ‘espionage’ | CNN Business

London
CNN
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Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich has been arrested in Russia on suspicion of espionage, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

“The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, US citizen Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry, suspected of espionage in the interests of the American government, have been suppressed,” the FSB said in a statement published Thursday by state news agency RIA Novosti.

State news agency TASS reported he was detained in Yekaterinburg, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains.

The FSB statement said Gershkovich was detained “while trying to obtain secret information” relating to “the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

According to Gershkovich’s biography on the Wall Street Journal’s website, he covers Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. He previously worked for news agency Agence France-Presse, the Moscow Times and the New York Times.

CNN has contacted the Wall Street Journal for comment.